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The Magus

Topics:World War II, John Fowles, The MagusPages: 4 (1315 words)Published: May 3, 2013

John Robert Fowles was born March 31, 1926 in Leigh-on-Sea, a small town located about 40 miles from London in the county of Essex, England. He recalls the English suburban culture of the 1930s as oppressively conformist and his family life as intensely conventional. Of his childhood, Fowles says "I have tried to escape ever since." Fowles attended Bedford School, a large boarding school designed to prepare boys for university, from ages 13 to 18. After briefly attending the University of Edinburgh, Fowles began compulsory military service in 1945 with training at Dartmoor, where he spent the next two years. World War II ended shortly after his training began so Fowles never came near combat, and by1947 he had decided that the military life was not for him. As his friend Bob Goosman said:"John Fowles was quite simply a great writer and a great man. In addition to producing two of the finest novels of the 20th Century--The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman--he was a brilliant essayist and a keen observer of nature". in 1965, The Magus--drafts of which Fowles had been working on for over a decade-- was published. Among the seven novels that Fowles has written, The Magus has perhaps generated the most enduring interest, becoming something of a cult novel, particularly in the U.S. Early drafts of Magus were made in 1950th when Fowles worked as a teacher of English on the Greek island Spetses which became a prototype of Praxos. So he knew a lot about greek culture and traditions. With parallels to Shakespeare's The Tempest and Homer's The Odyssey, The Magus is a traditional quest story made complex by the incorporation of dilemmas involving freedom, hazard and a variety of existential uncertainties. Fowles compared it to a detective story because of the way it teases the reader: "You mislead them ideally to lead them into a greater truth...it's a trap which I hope will hook the reader," he says.

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...The Magus
Main
* Nicholas Urfe – The main protagonist, 25-year-old Englishman who goes to Greece to teach English and one day stumbles upon the waiting room.
* Alison Kelly – Nicholas's girlfriend whom he abandons to go to Greece.
* Maurice Conchis – Wealthy intellectual who is a main player in the masques.
* Lily de Seitas – Young woman who is involved in the masques and with whom Nicholas falls in love.
Other
* Joe – young black man, involved in the masques.
* Maria – Conchis's maid.
* Demetriades – Fellow teacher at the school.
* Lily de Seitas (older) – Lily's mother.
* Rose de Seitas – Lily's identical twin sister
* Benji de Seitas – the older Lily de Seitas's young son.
* Kemp – Unmarried woman who rents Nicholas a room in London.
* Jojo – Young girl whom Nicholas pays to accompany him.
The Magus is told from the point of view of Nicholas Urfe, who is bored with life. Having attended Oxford and taught for a year at a public school, he decides to take a position as the English teacher at the Lord Bryon School in Greece, on the island of Phraxos. Nicholas looks up a former teacher there, and is warned to "Beware of the waiting-room," without explanation. Nicholas is not deterred, but during the last few weeks before he leaves, he meets Alison Kelly, an Australian girl who is about to begin training as an airline stewardess. They are both sophisticated about sex and somewhat cynical,...

...The large scale bioprocessing of the Conus magus marine snail toxin, Ziconotide.
The Conus magus snail, common name the Magical Cone/ Magician's Cone, is one of the most venomous marine snails and like all the species in the genus Conus, they are also predatory. This specific specie is an invertebrate and its classification is known to be: kingdom- Animalia, Phylum- Mollusca, Class- Gastropoda, Subclass- Prosobranchia, Order- Sorbeoconcha, Family- Conidae, Genus- Conus and Specie- Conus Magus.(Mead & Beckett Publishing. 1984: 335-336)(Branch & Branch, 1981: 215-219)
Figure 309: a Conus snail cathing its prey. (Branch, M. & Branch, G. 1981: 217)
Conus magus snails are most commonly found in the Western Pacific, near Australia and the Philippines. They are also routinely sold as food in these areas, although they are carnivorous Gastropods.
The Conus magus is a piscivorous (fish-hunting) snail. They have the most specializedradular teeth of all the marine snail species (it is arrow-like and barbed). It detects its prey with the use of a siphon. The siphon directs the water into the snail's mantle cavity so that the animal can sample water from various directions to locate the direction of a possible food source. It then catches its prey by extending a proboscis, with the arrow-like tooth, into the prey. Following is the injection of the venom, through the tooth, to subdue the...